I. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates generally to a method of and apparatus for handling messages in a mobile communications environment.
II. Description of the Related Art
A feature of mobile telecommunication services is the so-called short message service (SMS), a service in which text based messages may be sent between stations (typically two mobile stations). This service is particularly used in digital networks e.g. CDMA and GSM networks. SMSs have proved popular with customers and also with service providers who see them as a way to increase revenue.
The SMS message service has proved extremely popular and fashionable, and is seen by service companies as one means of increasing revenue as the next generation (so-called 3G) of cellular services becomes available. There is however a problem with the above-described present SMS arrangement. Currently, the handset only knows of one type of message (defined by the Short Message Service specification), and so every message has equal priority. This in turn means that there is no way to distinguish whether a particular message is more important than another or whether it should be just displayed or stored for later viewing.
A mobile station only has a finite amount of memory available to it for storing SMS messages and the like. Once that memory is full it is not possible for the mobile station to receive further SMS messages until space has been cleared in the memory. Thus, the above-described delivery of a priority message will be attempted if the mobile station has not been identified as unreachable irrespective of whether the mobile station has been identified as having no free memory capacity.